"
In 1876 he made an extended argument for the Centennial bill,
an eloquent plea AGAINST the old States'-rights arguments. "He poured out,"
says his biographer, "an exposition of nationalism and constitutionalism
which equaled in effect one of Webster's masterpieces."
"As a representative of the South," Lamar said at a later time,
"I felt myself, with my Southern associates, to be a joint heir
of a mighty and glorious heritage of honor and responsibility."
It was in this spirit and to voice the better sentiment of the South,
that Lanier eagerly responded to the invitation to write
the Centennial poems. He had fought with valor in the Confederate armies,
hoping to the last that they would be victorious. He had suffered
all the poverty and humiliation of reconstruction days,
but he had risen out of sectionalism into nationalism. It is a striking fact
that the two poets who are the least sectional of all American poets
-- for even Lowell never saw Southern life and Southern problems
from a national point of view -- were Walt Whitman and Lanier,
the only two poets of first importance who took part in the Civil War.
It is also significant, that in Lanier's "Psalm of the West"
we have a Southerner chanting the glory of freedom, without any chance
of having the slavery of a race to make the boast a paradox.
"Corn", "The Symphony", and the "Psalm of the West", with a few shorter poems,
were published in a volume in the fall of 1876 (the volume bore
the date 1877, however).
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